13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar (1st Croatian)
infantry division of the Nazi Party
The 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar (1st Croatian) was a mountain infantry division of the Waffen-SS, an armed branch of the German Nazi Party that served alongside but was never formally part of the Wehrmacht during World War II. At the post-war Nuremberg trials, the Waffen-SS was declared to be a criminal organisation due to its major involvement in war crimes and crimes against humanity. From March to December 1944, the division fought a counter-insurgency campaign against communist-led Yugoslav Partisan resistance forces in the Independent State of Croatia, a fascist puppet state of Germany that encompassed almost all of modern-day Croatia, all of modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, and parts of modern-day Serbia.
The division was named Handschar (Bosnian: handžar), after a local fighting knife or scimitar carried by Ottoman policemen during the centuries that the region was part of the Ottoman Empire. It was the first non-Germanic Waffen-SS division, and its formation marked the expansion of the Waffen-SS into a multi-ethnic military force. Composed mainly of Bosnian Muslims with some Catholic Croats, and mostly German and Yugoslav Volksdeutsche officers and non-commissioned officers, the members of the division took an oath of allegiance to the German Führer Adolf Hitler and the Croatian Poglavnik Ante Pavelić.
The division fought briefly in the Syrmia region north of the Sava river before crossing into northeastern Bosnia. After crossing the Sava, it established a designated "security zone" in northeastern Bosnia between the Sava, Bosna, Drina, and Spreča rivers. It also fought outside the security zone on several occasions, and earned a reputation for brutality and savagery, not only during combat operations but also for atrocities committed against Serb and Jewish civilians. In late 1944, parts of the division were transferred briefly to the Zagreb area, and non-German members began to desert in large numbers. Over the winter of 1944–45, the unit was sent to the Baranja region, where it fought against the Red Army and Bulgarians throughout southern Hungary, falling back via a series of defensive lines until they were inside the Reich frontier.
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